Hen keeps murdering chicks!!

Date sort Score sort
Welcome to BYC! It's a great place to come for help ... as you have unfortunately already learned! I agree with removing your toxic Mama. She's probably fine for egg production, but definitely not the nurturing Mom type. I had a Nankin bantam hen who was a solid layer and a consistently good broody, but when those little, wet yellow things started breaking her eggs, she went NUTS! She was good with them as long as she still had eggs in the nest, but once they were all "destroyed," she went after the egg-murderers with a vengeance. Her last two hatches, I left the eggs under her for the first two weeks, then move them to the incubator to finish off. It worked like a charm!
 
Megan423 said:
2nd year hatching off chicks, 1st year went good. This year one of the hens is a chick from last year, the other hen is the same main mom from last year. Ok so there both sitting on about 23 eggs, they started hatching off and around 5 days old I noticed one was dead in the run area. I watched them for a while and eventually saw the bad hen simply pecked the face of one the chicks and then chased it and kept pecking it's face and once it was injured severely, she stopped and walked off with the rest of chicks following. I tried to mend the hurt chick but it passed away. I looked at the other chick that was already dead and the same thing was wrong with it, it's little eye and side of it's face was pecked except worse. I looked up inside the nesting box because I heard a new one up there and I knew it should've been down walking around by that point and I looked it there, it was still alive but a tiny single peck hole was near it's eye. That would did not make it either. This hens dad is a red shoulder Yokohama and it's mom is a silkie. I have no clue what to do except take her out and let my good main mom raise them. Any advice?????????
Click to expand...
maybe if u don't let her see other chickens for a month she will realzize that she should treat her chicks nicely
 
chicken3fly said:
move the hen somewhere with no chickens until she realizes how to treat her chicks
Click to expand...
This hen is not human and will not "learn how to treat her chicks". Even humans hurt and kill their children. Either get rid of her or let her be who she is. Separate her until the chicks are bigger and then re-integrate. Chickens have certain instincts that cannot be changed. You can't send your hen to rehab. . .sorry.
 

New posts New threads Active threads

Back
Top Bottom